Drivers Just Not Comfortable with Automatic Vehicle Technology Yet

Posted on : March 6, 2018

Driverless technology has been touted as the best way to address the many preventable car accidents causing injuries and fatalities. But the truth is that fully driverless cars are unlikely to be on the roads of the US for several years to come. Early news stories about this technology not being fully ready to share the road with regular cars has prompted concerns from members of the public. Drivers must be able to trust these cars before using them regularly, but studies show that trust hasn’t been developed yet.

A new study completed by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows that despite that fact that automatic technology is becoming increasingly popular and there is the potential for fully autonomous cars all the way in the future, drivers are still concerned about the safety of these vehicles and heavy traffic on highways.

That’s the result of a study that included numerous volunteers from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and related organizations when it came to using adaptive cruise control and active lane keeping technology. These early autonomous technology types inside cars were designed to make things easier for drivers to avoid accidents.

Adaptive cruise control maintains a set speed and a clear following distance from the vehicle in front of it. Active lane keeping ensures that a car does not drift into another lane. Those who agree to use them over a period that could have gone anywhere from one day to three weeks felt generally positive about them. However, they preferred adaptive cruise control when compared with active lane keeping. The volunteers felt that smooth and gradual changes in the adaptive cruise control were extremely beneficial. However, using them on highways and in heavy traffic gave people cause for concern.

The adoption of autonomous technology may be critical for cutting down on the number of accidents caused by human error. Human error is the leading cause of vehicle accidents across the entire United States and leads to many severe injuries and fatalities on an annual basis.